Comparison is a thief of Joy

It has been said that “comparison is the thief of joy.”

We lock our doors to keep thieves away, but we treat this thief with an invite and give it a seat at our table, as well as the keys to our house.

We all compare ourselves, and we do it even when it often makes us unhappy. We are complicated humans.

This blog is more about researching a few neuroscience doctors' insight on behaviors that produce ongoing struggles of comparing ourselves to one another.

Read in The Message: Galatians 6:4

Thoroughly examine your identity and the tasks assigned to you, and fully commit to them. Avoid being self-impressed and refrain from comparing yourself to others. Everyone must be accountable for doing their best with their own life.

Read in the New International Version: 2 Corinthians 10:12

We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise.

The first question is ‘Why do we compare ourselves to other people?’

As humans, we have a few basic questions.  Who am I? How am I doing? Am I improving? Do I fit in?

To say it another way, as humans, we have a few basic needs.  First, we want to know who we are, we want to understand our own identity, and we want to be able to define ourselves.  Second, we want to see how we’re doing. We want to progress and become better. Third, we want to belong. Humans are social creatures; we want relationships and connections with other people.      

How to define a human

Leon Festinger, observes that humans can't define themselves intrinsically or independently; they define themselves in relation to others. An exception is Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy, who simply says, “I am Groot.” However, he's not human (and not real).

If you ask anybody else, they’ll give an answer that includes a relationship to another person or their association with a group, usually a profession. For example, when people introduce themselves, they usually say something like, “Hi, I’m a teacher,” (or a doctor, or a mechanic, or whatever their profession may be). 

If you press further into the question “Who are you?” they’ll usually answer with things like, I am a mother or father, I’m a sister or brother, an aunt or uncle. People define themselves in relation to someone else or something else. We can’t get away with just saying, “I am Groot” as a definition of who we are.  So one of the reasons why we compare ourselves to other people is to define and understand our own identity.  

The need for a measuring stick

Humans also want to progress and become better; we have an innate drive to evaluate ourselves.  We want to see how we’re doing; we want a measuring stick of some kind, and if we don’t have an objective means to evaluate our abilities and our opinions, then we compare them with other people’s skills and opinions.  

People also want to belong; we want to be connected to other people.  We compare our abilities and our opinions in order to seek groups that are similarly minded; we’re searching for where we fit in.  

We compare ourselves to other people as an attempt to evaluate our abilities and meet some very basic human needs. 

Is there any benefit to comparing with others? 

My next question was, “Is there any benefit to seeing how we stack up against others?”

My answer is, “It depends.” 

It depends on why we’re comparing ourselves in the first place.  Wait a minute, didn’t I already answer that question? It’s about evaluating ourselves and meeting our needs for identity, progression, and belonging?  Well, yes, and no. It gets a little more complicated.

Yes, we’re trying to meet our needs and evaluate ourselves, but how are we going about meeting those needs?  Are we comparing to objectively evaluate our abilities, or are we comparing to determine our value and our worth?  

Motivation for comparison

How are those different?  If we’re comparing with other people for self-evaluation and growth, it’s about asking questions like ‘How am I doing?’ and ‘Is there something I can learn or do better from watching what other people are doing?’  This is alluded to in Festinger’s fourth hypothesis, which talks about the drive to improve our abilities.  

I am thinking that the fourth hypothesis of the Social Comparison Theory is actually an overlap of the Social Learning Theory, created by Albert Bandura.  The social learning theory basically says that one of the major ways we learn is by observing other people and imitating or modeling their behavior.  For example babies learn how to talk by observing and imitating their parents.

However, since the social comparison theory was created about twenty years before the social learning theory, Festinger obviously didn’t have those words available to describe what he was observing,  but both theories suggest that humans have a natural drive to learn and progress, and we watch other people to learn new things and see what’s possible.